The 1960s
GRAHAM RYE’s fascination with the James Bond character began at the age of
11 when his
father Frank, a keen cinemagoer and amateur photographer, took him
to see the first Bond film Dr. No on its original theatrical release
in 1962. In 1964, with the release of the third Bond film, Goldfinger,
Graham read Ian Fleming’s novels – and his interest in all things Bond has
persisted ever since. As a schoolboy he would regularly cycle from his
home in Southall to Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, on the off chance
of spying some ‘Bond action’.
This eventually led to a brief meeting with Sean Connery and a visit to
production designer Ken Adam’s fantastic volcano set for the 1967 Bond
film You Only Live Twice. It was an event that would have a
profound and lasting effect.
Graham ‘escaped’ school at 16 with just one ‘O’ level in art and the
headmaster’s boot print still fresh on his backside, to begin his working
life in the West End of London in an advertising art studio which produced
artwork and photography for many of the leading advertising agencies of
the day. Starting as a messenger boy, he worked his way up to become a
studio manager with his own set of accounts, working in collaboration with
many of the art directors from the major advertising agencies in London’s
West End, including Masius, Wynne-Williams, JWT, Royds, Downton
Pulford, Hobson Bates, Crawfords, Saatchi & Saatchi, Young & Rubicam,
Dorlands, Erwin-Wasey, and Ogilvy, Benson & Mather.

.

Graham
Rye’s membership card from the 007 CLUB he organised while at
school in 1964.

Aged 11,
Graham tackles the THUNDERBALL novel for the first time.

Pan Books
1964 film tie-in paperback.

1978 wall
mural.

John
Mills by Graham Rye.

Bond
production designer Syd Cain by Graham Rye.

Special
effects miniatures expert Derek Meddings by Graham Rye.

During
the premiere party for True Lies in 1994, Graham
assures Arnold Schwarzenegger that Bond will be back – and
bigger than ever!

Titan
Books 1987 edition of The Daily Express OCTOPUSSY comic strip.

During
1989, 007 MAGAZINE issue #20 appears for sale throughout every
cinema in the UK.

.

First
published in 1989, Graham Rye's book The James Bond Girls
became the best-selling volume on the subject through eight
editions for a decade.

The 1997
UK edition.

The 1997
US edition.

The
original design concept forThe
Essential Bond.

The final
1998 cover design forThe Essential Bond.

Dr. No
(1962) UK Quad Poster

And did those feet…. The volcano set designed by Ken
Adam and built at Pinewood Studios in 1966 for You Only Live
Twice.

The 1970s/80s
His creative apprenticeship in advertising, combined with his ‘natural
eye’, led him into graphic design, and later, as a professional
photographer, taking advertising photographs and working in the studio
darkrooms.
During a sabbatical in 1978, Graham was ‘persuaded’ to paint an 8-foot by
12-foot wall mural for a neighbourhood household where the children were
both Star Wars and James Bond crazy!
Rye eventually moved into magazine publishing as a photographer and
designer until turning freelance in 1985, when among his
celebrity
photographic assignments subjects included actors Sir John Mills, Pat
Phoenix (Coronation Street’s Elsie Tanner), Keith Michell, Joan
Collins, and Irish singer/harpist Mary O’Hara. Other photographic
assignments included film premieres, glamour, food, wildlife, travel, lingerie, and
commercial and industrial subjects. Later in his 007 career he would
photograph many Bond personalities, including
Syd Cain and
Derek Meddings.
Graham took over The James Bond British Fan Club (as it was then
known) in 1983, when he ran the organisation in his spare time.
As the Club grew it occupied so much of his time that it became necessary
to make it his full-time occupation. And in 1988 he established its studio
headquarters in Woking. “It had become a greater challenge than my
freelance work – and far more satisfying,” he says. His professional
background as a photographer and designer enable him to produce 007
MAGAZINE to the standard one would expect to find in any publication
on sale in newsagents. 007 MAGAZINE is now read in over 40
countries worldwide.
Working from his base in the Kent countryside, Rye produces the
publication 007 MAGAZINE, and markets its impressive archive (the
largest in the world available to the media), and the content of the
007 MAGAZINE web-site. He is often in demand by the media and
companies alike as a consultant to anything that is ‘James Bond’.
During his 007 career, Graham Rye has been fortunate to meet all the actors who have portrayed James Bond and many other film celebrities, and
has interviewed many of the directors, production designers, stunt
arrangers and major production personnel who have worked on the Bond films
past and present – together with many of the Bond girls! To date, Graham
has been responsible for designing and publishing several thousand pages
dedicated to Secret Agent 007, and his interest, which has spanned over
four decades, has left him with a knowledge of the subject which is
second-to-none. Rye’s photographic memory for imagery has proved
invaluable in building his unique 007 MAGAZINE Archive, in
addition to which he also owns an archive of rare and unique material
relating to the life and career of Sir Sean Connery.
But James Bond is just the tip of the iceberg! Rye’s encyclopaedic
knowledge of cinema history stems from a childhood love of stories told
well: “I should have either square or cinemascope shaped eyes,” explains
Rye. “I spent most of my formative years devouring everything of worth in
entertainment on television, in cinema and in print, and in those days
there was a lot of it! I visited the twelve amazing local cinemas in the
surrounding area at least four times a week, sometimes on a Saturday
sitting through the same programme twice!” Although his professional
expertise in the entertainment world is aligned to the world of James
Bond, his first love has always been, and remains,
westerns. “No other film
genre is able to capture every conceivable aspect of human drama and mould
it into such masterful entertainment, John Ford’s The Searchers
being its zenith.”
During his tenure as Creative Director of The James Bond International
Fan Club (1983-2002), Graham Rye was also involved in many other
varied 007-related projects. In 1987 he was asked by Titan Books to write
the introduction for their compilation album of James Bond comic strips
which originally appeared in The Daily Express during the Fifties
and Sixties, of which he also compiled the definitive history for 007
MAGAZINE in 1987.

In 1988, 007 MAGAZINE issue #17 appears on sale in UK
newsagents, and features the first and definitive article by Graham
Rye about the history of The Daily Express James Bond comic
strips.

In 1988, Graham Rye became the first fan-based
organiser to enter discussions with 007 filmmakers EON Productions and Ian
Fleming (Glidrose)
Publications. After a meeting with representatives of both companies,
007 MAGAZINE became available for sale as an unlicensed product
throughout newsagents in the UK, including
W. H. Smith and John Menzies, selling 30,000 copies over its first 12
months of publication. Later in 1989, 007 MAGAZINE was also sold
throughout the Rank/Odeon cinemas and the Cannon cinema chain to tie in
with the sixteenth James Bond movie Licence To Kill. Also in 1988,
Rye was approached by the publishers Boxtree to produce a cover
concept for the book The James Bond Bedside Companion, after an
initial design had been rejected. Subsequently he designed and
photographed the final cover. Another commission for Boxtree
followed when he designed and photographed the cover of The Complete
Avengers, a book detailing the history of the popular British TV
secret agent series. His association with Boxtree eventually led to
the publication of his first book, The James Bond Girls, in June
1989 (Boxtree’s first all-colour volume), which he wrote, designed, and
picture researched from the archives of 007 MAGAZINEand the
filmmakers EON Productions, re-filing their picture archive in the
process. A new edition of his book was published in the UK, Germany, and
the USA during 1995 to coincide with the release of
GoldenEye,
since when various other editions have been published to coincide with the
release of Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and
The World Is Not
Enough (1999), when the launch party was held at the Café de Paris in
London with a bevy of ex-Bond girls in attendance.
The 1999 edition of The James Bond Girls was
updated and published with over 200 all-new photographs from the 007
MAGAZINE Archive. Over 25,000 copies of The James Bond Girls
have sold to date. Although now out of print, the 1999 edition of The
James Bond Girls book by Graham Rye remains one of the two
most signed
James Bond-related publications at autograph and movie collector fairs
around the world.

ABOVE: (left) Faced with an uninspired two-colour
design for the first UK printing of his book from the publisher,
author Raymond Benson suggested Boxtree should commission Graham
Rye, who designed and photographed the final cover (right).

After the positive response for The James Bond
Bedside Companion cover design, Boxtree commissioned Graham Rye
to design and photograph the cover for another of their titles,
The Complete Avengers.

Rye’s involvement with Boxtree introduced them
to the 007 filmmakers EON Productions and resulted in the company becoming
the official publishers of James Bond movie-related books and Cubby
Broccoli’s autobiography, When The Snow Melts. Rye would later also
become responsible for initiating the cover concept, and unofficially
overseeing the text and photographic content for the authors of
Boxtree’s best-selling book The Essential Bond, published in
1998, and which to date has sold a third of a million copies.

Graham Rye’s original ‘long shelf-life’ photo concept
for the first edition of his book The James Bond Girls.

Graham signs copies of his book for Bond fans
attending the press screening of Licence To Kill in 1989.

ABOVE: (left) Boxtree submitted a cover design to
Graham which failed to meet his approval, and later a compromise
was arrived at with a different final cover design for the 1999
edition (far right). (middle) Graham with his ‘Bond Girl’
guests, Mollie Peters, Martine Beswicke, and Sarah Donohue at
the Café de Paris in London.

ABOVE: (left) At Planet Hollywood, Graham signs
copies of his 1997 edition of The James Bond Girls, and
(right) with his guests Shirley Eaton and Caroline Munro.